Sunday, March 25, 2018

A few
years ago, air turbulence did not bother me that much but during the last two
years, I have fallen into the trap of not liking it at all and I am sure many
people would not like to have a bumpy flight to their destination. A little bit
of turbulence is expected (although I don’t even like it a little bit) but my
tolerance level for air turbulence has gone down considerably and I am not
happy about it. Even a little bit of turbulence makes me nervous and jumpy and
I need to overcome that. And the fact that the pilot announces that the plane
may hit some minor turbulence adds to my nervous. And the fact that I love to
travel and visit new places especially Hawaii makes me madder that I have to
endure turbulence in order to reach my favorite destinations. But as with
acrophobia (which is fear of heights), this fear of air turbulence does not stop
from traveling as with fear of heights has not stopped me from going on
whiteface mountain in New York state which is at above 4000 feet elevation and
also did not stop me from going to the Mount Haleakala in Maui (elevation above
10,000 feet).

And we were
also planning to go to the Swiss Alps where the mountain reaches more than
10,000 feet so why am in complaining about Air turbulence, that is the question
I keep on asking myself. If you are in a car and you drive, you also get shaken
when an 18 wheeler passes by you, it is the same with Air turbulence and if
there is not that much then I need to start taking nervous medicine to keep me
calm even on flights with less than two hours of duration. People become
nervous when it is their first flight and I have done many hours on flight
since I was very young so why now I am getting the jitters and next time I take
a flight I need to take a stock of this situation.

Now I
come to another of this so called unity among Muslims and introduce you to an
organization that is as useless as the one described before that is OIC.
Established in 1945, it has now 22 members all of them related by the Arab
Ethnicity with little else in common in terms of their relationships among
themselves and with the outside world. Here again I will give you examples
which will show how this organization has been unable to help Arab in resolving
their conflict among themselves or even project any kind of real power to the
outside world. Let’s start with Palestinian issue which has been festering since
the late forties; no Arab league success has been witnessed in this area. Along
with the Israel-Arab War, this organization has simply ignored the Palestinian
issue since their members tend not to agree on anything. Same thing goes with
the First Gulf war, when Iraq invaded Kuwait; it was only the United States
that was able to unite quarrelsome countries into a ragtag team of members to
oust Iraq from Kuwait.

When the
U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the voice of Arab league was again muted or silent
and when the Arab spring came, there was no effort to resolve this issue among them.
Now again with the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem, the Arab League is
just reduced to denunciation and nothing much. Although headquartered in Cairo,
Egypt, it is predominantely influenced by the Saudis as they have the money to
muscle with the kind of voice that the Arab league finds when it does. During
the Saudi Boycott of Qatar (which is still ongoing), Arab League does not count
as they are just sitting pretty on the sidelines. And the Yemen war which is
also part of the Arab League and also the OIC, nothing has changed much. No
discussion to end this war. Both the OIC and the Arab League are on the whole
useless organization which cannot resolve any of the issues facing the Muslim
world and it is complete waste of resources as the Islamic (and Arab) countries
pursue their own path based on their own self interest.

The last
gunslinger tries to prevent the destruction of the dark tower which holds the
universe together from an evil entity. Although a massive novel, the movie
makers manage to condense it to 90 minutes. I have not read the novel and I
wonder what was left behind. On its own, an okay fantasy movie. Recommended
with caution.

I am not sure
how many of you heard about Organization of Islamic Organization (OIC). Established
in 1969 with now the strength being 57 countries, this is according to me one
of the most useless organization that was ever created which does not do
anything or the countries in it don’t give it much importance in matters of
disputes among themselves. Headquartered in the Red sea city of Jeddah in Saudi
Arabia, it was supposed to be United Nations of Islamic Countries meant to
resort disputes among member countries but to date its working or the lack of
it has been abysmal or even below that if this is possible. I will give you
some examples so that you can see that how ineffective it has been in resolving
the problems facing the Muslim World or even raising their collective voice on
international forums. Since the issue Kashmir and Palestine predates this
organization, I will exclude it but give a little bit of hint of both of them. Starting
from 1969, this organization has virtually not done anything but to employ a
bunch of people who are just there to sit pretty. I know I am being harsh but
let’s start.

The 1971
war between India and Pakistan which saw the birth of the Republic of
Bangladesh, a former part of Pakistan, no intervention and ultimately with the
intervention of United Nations and some bilateral talks, nobody in OIC bothered
to do something, same thing with Afghanistan war in 1979, the attack on the Holy
Mosque in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the attack on
Bosnian Muslims until the United States intervened militarily, the 9/11 attacks
and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq War and then the Arab Spring
and then the intra Gulf fight between Qatar and some Arab countries, the
Rohingya Crisis In Myanmar, the OIC has been overwhelmingly useless in doing
anything to help the Muslims unless it is backed by the Western powers and
still the emotional Muslims look to it like it has some magical powers, I think
that it should be dismantled as the amount saved can be used somewhere else. The
OIC should be called Organization of (I) neffective, ndifferent, ipotent or any of the words that start with I
signifying anything which is useless.

Madea
runs for her life when she ventures into a haunted campground and all kinds of
monsters are unleashed. Literally I have no idea why I even care to watch this
as it is very unfunny (save for some brief moments). Not Recommended

I was
reading an article about a strike going on near the Pakistan-Afghan border for
the last four days because new technology has been introduced to easily
facilitate the customs procedures by involving computers. This would seem very
efficient from one’s standpoint but the old system had involved various steps
and with each step somebody livelihood was involved and now they felt
threatened and were striking to abolish this introduction of computers which
they felt had eliminated their need for so many steps and now all those steps
were replaced by one of two people. If I was one of them, I would also feel
threatened since I would not know what I would do when my skill set which would
have become obsolete by the new technology introduced to reduce costs and time,
which makes me, come to this post. I also wrote in my blog a few weeks ago
regarding how the online hailing websites has supposedly forced one of the taxi
drivers to commit suicide blaming it on the new technology being embraced by
the city of New York.

Technology
is good as long as it enhances the standard of living and it has done wonders
for the many people around the globe but the darker part which people did not
realize (I don’t understand how would they not) that it has disrupted the lives
of people who were trained to do things a certain kind of way. For example see
how one of the biggest online retailers is experimenting with grocery stores
with no checkout counters and no employees where people will only use their app
to scan their products and also add to their account and just stroll out of the
stores without interaction with any employee and instead of employing maybe
several people to man their cash counters, they would have only a few employees
to restock their stores. I have seen and used these electronic counters in
stores where you scan your items barcodes and they will show the price and then
you scan your loyalty card and your credit card and you are done without
getting any face to face interaction with stores cashiers. Another one is how
driverless cars are being experimented with so that there will be no drivers
behind the wheel (scarier than in other cases as lives are at stake). Robots
are increasingly taking over some of the work that humans used to do in advance
countries as the ageing population is being gradually replaced by robots
wherever the companies can. Although technology has definitely made life easier
for people but it has and will cause substantial unemployment among less
educated people and the resultant resentment will not be good for the economies
which are increasingly relying on technology to increase their productivity and
gain competitive advantage against their rivals.

I don’t
know if the topic of this post will offend some of you but it is the reality
that there are some people who would like to be included in the exclusive club
of people who just won’t shut up even if they know that what they are saying
will get into trouble. Even as I write I am sure, some people will mouth off
and then when the backlash happens, will come out with tears or say that there
words have been taken out of context (whatever that means) or they did not mean
to say that or they have reflected on what they have said and they feel sorry
if their hurts have offended some to the people or some sentences like that
meant to soften the blow to their reputation or reduce the backlash they are
encountering online or to protect their current jobs. Even with all the things
going on, there will be some people who will curse or should ethnic or racial
slurs and then come back the next day saying things that I wrote in this post.

I
acknowledge that some people have had bad days ( I do too)which means that they are encountering some
of the frustrations of life which are not under their control or they feel they
want to vent out loud so that people can hear them and some do under the
influence ofalcohol or drugs (where it
is still not okay but for this they have an excuse) but in such cases, why
can’t they just shut up and don’t open their mouth and let their steam out in
some silent mode or just step back and don’t react. I mean that words can hurt
very much and once spoken can’t be taken back even when you apologize or try to
clarify your remarks or whatever excuse you want to give for your sudden burst
of ignorance (that is what I can call right now). Because your words can cause
not only hurt and damage to other people feelings but also hurt your reputation
and your loved ones. So my advice is to think before your speak since it does
not take much time before you do and if you can’t please don’t show your
ignorance and just shut up because people don’t want to hear about your
problems and your rants as there will be consequences.

Really I
should know because I use to work in a bank and have gone out to some interviews
in banks which have their headquarters in third world countries with
questionable compliance issues. It is an issue with all banks but the ones
which are under intense scrutiny are the tiny banks on third world countries
where the issue of compliance has not been taken seriously previously and are
now scrambling to be acceptable to world financial institutions. Every bank
that I know of has ramped up their compliance departments and the growth of
jobs is increasing there. But the banks of the developing bank have become
overly cautious about their hiring process and they ask an absurd amount of
knowledge about compliance before even considering hiring you. As you well know
there are always officers involved in checking two to three times whether something
is in compliance before issuing something and still the lower staff gets blamed
for things that should have been stopped by the departmental supervisors.

Although
I understand that banks in the past have been lax with their compliance issues
but now it seems that the pendulum has sprung to the other side as every
decision made has the key feature of compliance in it and if it cannot pass the
compliance test than the decision is abandoned. But I want to emphasize here
that the past occurrence of loose compliance issues were not done by the rank
and file and it was usually done or overlooked by the management as everybody
was making money but with the current environment of money laundering and
terror financing the main headlines dominating everything, the compliance
monster has taken over or I should say consumed the entire banking industry
(and other financial institutions as well).

An
American Influential newspaper reported a few weeks ago that Israel has been
helping the Egyptian military in its fight against Islamic militancy in the
Sinai region. The report said that that Israelis go to extreme lengths to erase
any symbol of Jewish state on its plane and drones that bomb the Islamic
militants and the Egyptian Government takes pain to hide this help from its
people. It was also reported that Israelis are happy to oblige as they feel the
Egyptian Military is becoming dependent on them for this fight. And I
have not seen any denial of this news report as if it does not exist or it is
not worth issuing a denial about. But anyway based on the report if it is
untrue then I just read a conspiracy theory which would not have prompted me to
write this post. But if it is the truth which nobody wants to know about then
it is really troublesome and sad.

I will
explain, it is said that Egypt being the most populous Arab country has the
supposedly most powerful military but with the above mentioned news, it seems
that this is just a bit of propaganda that had been circulating around for if
the Egyptian military cannot handle a bunch of militants in their own backyard,
how and for what use is the military when it will come to the main task of
fighting overseas if ever or supposedly fight their enemy(which is
non-officially Israel and also officially Iran-an easy Muslim target). It is a
sad state of affairs for the Muslims that they are only good in fighting among
themselves and depend on others even for their security while maintaining huge
militaries.

What kind
of stupid question am I asking, if you say that they don’t do then you need to
think deeper for times that you wanted to say something but held back your
thoughts spilling out of your mouth in order not to offend your boss, your
spouse, relatives, colleagues, friends, authorities and even when you writing
you have to make sure not to offend your core audience or not to write
something which is deemed offensive by authorities in various countries around
the world. Even when you feel safe in saying something, you don’t want to say
it in case it offends someone later on. This becomes a reality when you are
investigating some criminal act where the perpetrators don’t want you to go in
deep enough to find the real criminals, be it the state sponsored agencies or
criminal enterprises. Especially it is really dangerous in the developing
countries where the level of corruption is high and the governments want to
hide their wrong deeds.

Even I
residing in the United States and writing on my blog try to censor myself and
don’t write things which may cause me trouble when I travel overseas to certain
countries or harm some people inadvertently. Although I hate to do this but
self censorship is a reality for me and for millions of other bloggers who have
to tread a fine line between what is reportable and what should not be
mentioned in the greater good of their fellow human beings. This is the sad
reality of which we are all part of.

The
second time around is not the charm as the monk and his three disciples
continue their cartoonish battle with the demons. If you want to continue on
with the series, it is okay entry, otherwise not recommended

When I
use to work in a former place, the management has the fancy idea (well it was
fancy at that time) that open floor office is the way to go as there will be
more collaboration and the staff would be feel more easy access to the higher
management. On paper it all seems good and I had the opportunity to work in
such an environment. At last it was weird to work with your colleagues with no
barrier and it again became weirder when you see that you departmental head is
sitting in front of you and there are no barriers in between. He/she watches
your every movement and it makes you feel uncomfortable. Furthermore, you have
to set your own boundaries regarding your stuff as with no known boundaries,
your stuff can spill over to the other person doing some other job. The biggest
complain about this open floor concept is that it is too haphazard and chaotic.

I don’t
see any kind of collaboration that was mentioned as being advantageous to this
concept as too much noise and constant invasion of your private space distract
you from doing your task at hand. Even further if you are checking some
documents or are preparing to write a report, there is no privacy or space
where you can gather your thoughts to prepare an effective report. I don’t know
if the saving of costs that is so much advertised in this concept regarding
less office space is worth the resentment that brews underneath all the employees.
Maybe it looks good to the senior management since it may or may not show up in
their bottom line or hearing from their line managers that it is working
fantastically but for the rank and file (and to I at least) it is just another
dreamt up concept to generate a few extra dollars and some savings without
caring about the input of their employees.

Since the
Florida shooting there has been increasing emphasis on school safety with the
major proposals being arming teachers and to a lesser extent put metal
detectors. And with the heighted attention comes increasing threats from so
called students on the social media to attack the schools. Thankfully every
time a threat of such kind was posted on the social media, somebody alerted the
authorities and the threat defused and the people who made the threats arrested
or searched to make sure that the threat was not credible. It is good that
everybody is now alert to these kind of threats in order to make everybody
secure. The President has suggested that even if some teachers were armed, the
kid would not have killed so many of his former fellow students and he is all
in for arming some percentage of teachers in schools. I don’t know how
effective will that be and how it supposed to work. Will the firearms be locked
safely away from the eyes of students which in the case of another attack (GOD
forbid) will be then useless?

I am not
so thrilled about teachers packing heat in class in full view of the students
or even hidden somewhere under his/her clothes. Teachers are there to teach not
to fight crazy would be killers. But I have read that some states do arm their
teachers. Anyway arming the teachers would not help that much as compared to
installing metal detectors and hiring off duty or retired cops to police the
schools. They should be armed in case of any eventuality. Besides this raising
the age to 21 are proposed is not going to do that much good (but it is a
start) since people are still getting guns without much background checks. I
will come to the top of Guns in the posts in the future.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

After playing the board game Ouija to try to connect
with her dad, a teenager tries to protect herself and her siblings when she
summons evil spirit in her apartment. A good horror movie. Recommended. In
Spanish with English Subtitles